The Ties that Bind
by CarlileLovesAnime
Summary: Some very important advice for Tsuna on his wedding day... oneshot.


**Hello...**

**I wrote this while I was bored on a road trip. Figured Reborn and Tsuna needed something serious like this. **

**I don't own KHR.**

0o.o0o.o0

**Key:**  
Words = Tsuna's POV  
_Words _= Reborn's POV

0o.o0o.o0

_Death is such a hollow word. For most people it means so much – it's their fear, their motivation or their wish. Yet, it has never meant a thing to me._

_You may say I'm messed up. I say I'm just how I want to be. _

_I'm known throughout the world as Reborn, the infamous and indestructible hitman with the ability to completely turn lives around. But, come now, I don't do much. __**I've**__ never changed any life but my own; any of the things I do that happen to affect others are purely coincidental. Life is what you make the decisions about. Death is my problem, the only thing I care about, or don't. Leave the latter only to me. _

_Honestly, I never thought much about what I do. It's second nature, or if there were such a thing as destiny, it's that, too. I may be no Superman, but I do what I can, do it well and __**move**_ _**on**__, and whatever happens, happens. What my drive is, I can't tell you I know, because I cannot lie. _

_As for this kid… he's work. But it's not like I've never seen his type before._

_Am I going to prove myself, and him, wrong? I don't know. Depends. Maybe he'll be the one to stay in my head after I leave._

_Or maybe I'll kill him first, and that will be the end of that. _

0o.o0o.o0

My hands are weak, uncoordinated, trembling. **Over, around, through… **I can't keep fooling myself. If I can't just tie a tie, how can I…?

From the back of the room, I can hear the door handle click and the door open; I cannot see anything but my reflection in the mirror.

I drop my hands to my side and smile. "Oh, good, Gokudera. I need your help," I call to my best man – that is probably him, isn't it? – "My hands, they're –"

"I'm not Gokudera."

That voice. So deep, sure of itself… I've never heard it before. But there's a new aura in the dressing room.

I tense up a little and turn on my heels, feeling the black tie fall apart. I catch it, barely, but when I see the man in the suit by the door, I go limp again and I immediately bite down on my lip.

There he is, condescending smirk, black fedora and yellow pacifier gleaming in the windowlight.

Reborn.

Except he's different: he's taller, older. Is the curse on him finally lifted?

"R…Reborn…" I whisper in disbelief.

He told me ten years ago that he would never see me again.

He nods. "Ciaossu, No-Good Tsuna." He shoves his hands into his trouser pockets and a timid breeze from the open window stirs his long, curly sideburns.

My eye twitches. Otherwise, I don't make a move.

The man chuckles once, closes the door and nonchalantly rolls his eyes. "You told me when you were young that your biggest wish was to marry Kyoko Sasagawa. Looks like today's the day you go through with it, eh?" he says.

My mouth closes and I nod. "I would've by all means invited you to the wedding," I say meekly, "But I couldn't for the life of me **find **you."

He takes a step forward.

"You came anyway, I see," I add. My fingers fidget and I realize the tie's not in them anymore.

He takes another step forward.

I swallow and find that I'm inching back. My hands clench up. I suck my lips into my mouth nervously.

After a minute, the toes of his leather shoes touch mine. He throws me a last glance before opening his suit jacket.

I cringe. The worst thoughts instantly rush through my mind. **Oh, God, what if he kills me, on my wedding day? **I think to myself, staring at the revolver in his inside pocket.

His hand disappears into the blackness for a few seconds, then emerges with a piece of paper folded into fourths. He holds it between two fingers, the one thing separating his bleakly determined face from my own. He blocks his sharp onyx eyes with the paper.

"Do you know what this is?" Reborn asks. I can only see his mouth articulate the words as my shorter stature allows it.

I focus on it for a minute. "No."

He swipes it down and is now right in my face. His expression unchanging, he says to me:

"No-Good Tsuna, do you remember that first night with me? While you were in the bath, I was in your room, and I found this" – he flashes the paper at me again – "on your nightstand.

"It's a suicide note.

"You wrote it yourself while you were alone that afternoon, promising that that night you were going to hang yourself on your closet doorknob with the necktie from your school uniform, just because you found out Kyoko Sasagawa has a boyfriend."

I gulp and sweat. I remember now…

He continues. "When I found it, I had only known you two hours, and I had a decision to make: either I keep it there and let you end your life so ungracefully, or I throw it away and let what happen, happen. I did neither.

"I've kept it with me all these years. And I vowed to myself at that very moment that this" – he lifts it up and lowers it a third time – "**foolishness** would not take place while I was around."

For a second, I can feel some wetness and pain push at my eyes. He takes a step backward.

Reborn's smile has faded. "Now," he says, "You're saying, 'If I can't just tie a tie, how can I possibly put that ring on Kyoko's finger?'" He looks down, and I look down too, and he lifts up my hands one after the other and positions each of my fingers so that I am ready to hold something. Keeping one of his owns hands under mine, he places the paper onto my palms and gently makes me close my hands around it.

"You were willing to tie a tie then, weren't you?" he says. He pushes my fists to my chest.

My milk chocolate eyes meet his black ones. I've never noticed before – or maybe this is new? – the tiredness in his eyes. Where before there were only two beady little stone-cold eyes of pure **evil**, there is now actual emotion, a look of loss and of pride and of shame and of salvation.

I don't even realize he's slipping away until he speaks one last time.

"Goodbye, No-Good Tsuna," he says, nothing but his head peeking out from the other side of the dressing room door. "May we meet again someday, when the sky is bright and your spirits are low and I decide to kill you, or have you do the same to me."

**Click**. The door shuts.

When I look down in my hands, there is nothing there but a black necktie.

0o.o0o.o0

_I don't know why I do the things I do. But I do know that there's some good in them. Even if it's only death that I can control. _


End file.
